


Thoughts of You - With Wings

by lorata



Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Bats, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Cockroaches, Future Fic, Gen, Rats, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8981191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata
Summary: A few years after her family leaves New York and moves to Virginia, Margaret (formerly "Boots") remembers nothing of her adventures underground, but a few things stick: comfort in the dark; strange dreams with creatures who feel like friends; and a fond fascination for rats, bats and roaches.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeria/gifts).



Other kids dream of dinosaurs chasing them through rainbow tunnels, or rooms filled with golden fairy lights that dart around and avoid their grasping fingers, or riding a car without a driver or a train that jumps the rails, or houses stocked to the brim with candy that they can never eat before waking. They share these dreams at circle time at school when the teacher asks — the teacher shares her own most common recurring nightmare, trying to find a toilet but all the bathrooms are dirty and have no doors, and the students squirm and giggle in horror — and everyone else nods and gasps and pitches in with their agreement.

Other kids are afraid of the dark; they ask their parents to leave the door open a crack, or install a night light near the bed, or have a lamp within easy reach so all they have to do is hit a switch. The dark closes in, presses against them and whispers terror in their ears, and they might pretend to be brave in front of each other but a silent understanding glance passes between them whenever someone older, someone bigger, admits the fear.

Margaret (it’s been years since anyone called her Boots) dreams, too, but not like the others. She dreams of darkness, of rats as tall as men and cockroaches the size of dogs and bats large enough to ride. When she first shares her dream at circle time the girl beside her shrieks in gleeful horror, the kind that’s safe and fun and titillating in the daylight under the fluorescent lights surrounded by her classmates, and several more writhe in theatrical shudders.

“No.” Margaret frowns. Her hands curl into fists at her side and she forces them to unclench, spreading her fingers and pushing her palm flat against the floor. Gregor does that, when people startle him, when someone comes up behind him without calling out or he sees a shadow around a corner. “No, not like that.” 

(Margaret doesn’t get angry like Gregor — not like Gregor, who quit school and now gets homeschooled after too many fights, too many kids being stupid over stupid things, _it’s like they’ve never seen a war_ he snarled once and Mom hushed him because Margaret, recently no-longer-Boots, was colouring in the corner — but sometimes a dark flash of something ugly curls up inside her and she thinks of gnawing and biting and crawling and screams and her chest gets hot.)

“I wasn’t scared,” Margaret says when the teacher asks, after shushing the other kids and reminding them that sharing time is not for making fun. “They were my friends. The dark wasn’t scary, either. It was warm, and my friends were there. They kept me safe.”

“That sounds like a very interesting dream, Margaret,” the teacher says, encouraging, but the other kids snicker and Margaret feels that heat in her chest again.

After that they draw their dreams, and the other kids whisper to each other and giggle and pass the crayons back and forth but Margaret ignores them all, her own box inside the protective crook of her arm as she bends over the page and grips the black crayon in her fist. 

The drawing doesn’t come out right. She colours the dark but it looks wrong on the page, like an angry cloud and not warm or comforting at all. Tears prick Margaret’s eyes and she crumples up the page and throws it in the recycling when her teacher hands her a black piece of construction paper and a box of pastels. She doesn’t usually let anyone use them, the chalk is too messy, and Margaret tilts her head.

“Try this,” the teacher says, smiling. “It might help you express yourself better.”

She’s right. Drawing on black paper with the chalk pastels makes the colours glow out from the darkness, and Margaret smudges the harsh lines with a tissue like her teacher tells her until everything looks soft and safe. She draws herself, wearing the big rain boots that accompanied her in all her baby pictures, and a big rat with a criss-cross scar across his face, and a big bat flying above her and a big cockroach at her feet.

(At first she draws two cockroaches beside each other, but that doesn’t feel right. Margaret tries to erase one but the chalk sticks to the construction paper and instead there’s a messy smear where its head used to be. Margaret stares at it, stomach churning and a sick, bitter taste in her mouth, then pushes the paper aside and starts again.)

They hang all the pictures on the bulletin board with a short description. A few of the kids borrowed Margaret’s idea and used black paper and colored pencils, but Margaret’s is the only one with pastels and the only one that glows and the only dark dream drawing that isn’t meant to be scary. She stares at it, and this time the feeling that fills up her chest is soft and warm and glowing, but a little sad, too. 

(There’s a special pet store in the mall that sells both rats and cockroaches, and Margaret used to drag Mom in there to stare at them, standing on her toes but never touching the glass in case she scared them. Every time they drove into town and stopped at the mall Margaret insisted they stop in, until she overheard a customer talking to the manager and learned that everything in the store was food for people’s pet reptiles. Margaret started crying, begged Mom to buy every single rat or roach in the store and bring them home to save them, until Mom picked her up and hauled her out while throwing apologies to the shocked manager. They don’t go to the pet supply store anymore.) 

One day there’s a cockroach in the classroom — it happens when the weather turns cold, the teacher reassures them as the kids scream and scramble backwards while the roach skitters over the floor in a dark blur, it’s all right it just wants to be warm — but then one of the boys darts out and stomps on it, grinds down with the toe of his shoe and twists until they hear the _crunch_. He lifts his shoe and there’s the roach, dead and smashed, one leg still twitching.

Margaret screams. She screams and screams and screams, and the teacher can’t calm her and the nurse can’t calm her and in the end they have to call Mom and have her bring the car. By then Margaret is too tired to cry anymore, just slumps against the car door and rests her forehead on the window as the buildings and trees flash past outside.

“What happened?” Gregor asks when Mom and Margaret come inside. Mom tells him and his face goes slack, and his hands twitch and he looks at Margaret like he wants to comfort her but instead he turns and goes into his room and shuts the door behind him. 

“I don’t like when people kill bugs,” Margaret says to Mom, after Gregor leaves. It comes out as a challenge, and she didn’t mean it to and that doesn’t even make sense but it does anyway. “They didn’t do anything bad.” 

Mom’s face has lines, and she raises a hand and rubs both eyes, draws her fingers together to pinch her nose. “I know,” she says. “I know, baby. Why don’t you go play outside until you feel better.” 

She doesn’t really feel like playing, but it’s better than being inside with the sound of Gregor’s silence pushing out from his room and filling up the rest of the house, so all right. There’s lots to do in the backyard, way more than Mom says there was when they lived in New York in that tiny apartment with nothing but concrete out back, and Margaret keeps herself amused until the sun starts to set.

Then it’s her favourite time, and Margaret sits under the maple tree and watches as the bats appear and wing around the yard, sometimes chirping low enough for Margaret to hear them. She watches them fly, trying to count them without overlapping but she never makes more than twenty before she has to start over, and there Margaret stays until Mom calls her in for dinner. 

That night she dreams again. In her dream Margaret hugs them all, stepping on tiptoes to fling her arms around the rat and the bat, crouching down to lean her forehead against the roach’s smooth carapace. When she wakes up there are tears on her cheeks and Gregor sitting at the end of her bed.

“Hey,” Gregor says, his dark eyes soft and warm in the dim light. “I think it’s time I told you a story.” 

Gregor doesn’t tell stories, he doesn’t even like to read them, and Margaret sits up straight. “What kind of story?” she asks.

Gregor sighs. He pulls his knees up to his chest, rests his chin on his forearms. “About a princess,” he says, “and the creatures who loved her. It’s not a happy story. You might be angry at me for telling it. I tried to forget it for a long time. Are you sure you want to hear?” 

Margaret reaches over, grips Gregor’s foot because she can’t reach his hand. “Yes,” she says. “I want to hear it.” 

Gregor nods, closes his eyes, and starts to talk.


End file.
